Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (18 page)

Perhaps this was the luck of which Jelch had spoken.

She stared out at Kaspar, who was smiling with satisfaction.

She reached up and backhanded the dart from its moorings, so that they would not remove it and learn that it had failed to pierce her flesh. She wondered how long the drug would have taken to affect her; she had to be very careful, now, lest she give herself away.

She backed off and came up against the bars, then slipped down onto her haunches. She blinked. She would give it a minute before she closed her eyes fully. She felt a surge of hope, and at the same time a moment of panic: she was not free yet.

“What have you done...?” she asked with assumed drowsiness.

Kaspar said, “Merely a little sedative, Miss Chatterjee. I am sorry, but I did give you ample opportunity...”

She fluttered her eyes, allowed her head to drop forward. She lifted it suddenly, and opened her eyes briefly as if in a futile bid to stay awake, then let her head fall again and her eyes close.

She slumped against the bars, to all intents unconscious.

She heard a key in the lock, turning, and the door creak open, footsteps...

She felt tense, and willed herself to relax.

Grunting, the Russians took her weight and carried her from the confines of the cage. Her initial impulse was to fight, to spring into life and attack her abductors. But she knew that that would be a stupid mistake, and bided her time. Her head and arms dangling, she was ferried across the chamber to the hard, cold surface of the autopsy table and laid none too gently on her back.

The array of scalpels and knives were to her right. When she was sure that both men were close, she would reach out for a weapon, sit up and slash out at whoever was closest to her. Then she would leap from the table and attack the second Russian.

Kaspar spoke in his grumbling, ugly tongue, and the young man replied.

So Kaspar was to her right, the other to her left. She would attack the older man first, incapacitate him and then attend to the younger man.

She wondered what they were saying; their tone was conversational, casual. She wondered if she were just another innocent victim they would despatch without a qualm, for the greater good of their beloved ideology.

The thought incensed her, drove her to act.

She moved her right hand fractionally, felt the cold steel of a blade, and shifted her fingers towards the handle. At the very second her fingers curled around the handle of the knife, she sprang upright. One of the men grunted in surprise. She caught Kaspar’s startled expression as she slashed out at him and missed. He backed off, tripping and falling onto his considerable bottom. The momentum of her swing carried her knife hand around, slicing towards the younger Russian who was frozen in place as if with shock. The blade slashed his face, bit deep, parting white flesh to the bone and shocking her with the resultant spume of brilliant red blood that slapped across her thighs. The man backed away, crying out in disbelief and pressing a hand against his lacerated face as if attempting to hold the torn flesh in place. He fetched up against the taxidermy bench, tripped and fell with a startled cry.

Jani jumped from the table, facing Kaspar as he struggled to his feet. With her left hand she fumbled on the tabletop and found a scalpel.

She took a step forward, clutching a weapon in each hand.

Kaspar was two yards away, crouched like a bear, watching her intently. All around him a silent menagerie of stuffed animals looked on. She felt the young man’s blood soaking through her dress and drenching her thighs, hot at first then quickly cooling.

A weapon in each hand, she faced Kaspar. “Back off towards the door. Draw the bolts and open the door. Then move to the far end of the room.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then I will attack you.”

He smiled, infuriatingly. “A little thing like you?”

“I don’t think your friend would underestimate me, given a second chance. Now move towards the door.”

She wanted him to show fear, but instead he merely smiled again as if it were he who had the upper hand and was toying with her. “You do realise, I hope, that even once through the door, you would not be free? My people are in the ante-room, awaiting the success of the operation.”

He was bluffing. He would have cried out by now, raised the alarm, if his cohorts had been nearby. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take. Move towards the door.”

She was aware that the younger Russian was somewhere behind her. She had thought him too badly injured to get to his feet and attack her, but with a surge of paranoid fear she wondered if she were wrong. Not that she could risk a glance over her shoulder...

She danced nimbly forward again like a fencer and brought the knife in her right hand down in a great slashing arc.

She felt the flesh of Kaspar’s belly part beneath the blade, and the material of his surgeon’s gown bloomed with a slowly spreading carnation of blood.

He gasped and staggered back, skittling an antelope. It toppled, brought down a brown bear which crashed against a chimpanzee in a bizarre domino effect which in any other situation might have been amusing.

Kaspar clutched his stomach, staring at her with fury in his porcine eyes.

“You will die for this...”

She controlled her anger. Now was the time for a calm head, rational thoughts; she could not give in to her hatred of this man. Her heart pulsed. She was sweating. She recalled the other man and glanced quickly over her shoulder: there was no sign of him.

“Move towards the door and open it!” she said.

“For all the good it would do you...”

“I said move!” She leapt forward again, feinting with the blade in her right hand, and was gratified to see him scuttle back in alarm.

“Move!”

He looked over his shoulder, planning a route through the forest of animals. As he shuffled backwards, Jani matched his progress warily, on the alert lest he reach out and send a stuffed animal tumbling towards her.

He passed between a rearing brown bear and a panther. Jani slowed her advance. They were perhaps ten yards from the wall and the door. He continued backing carefully from her, occasionally looking over his shoulder to ensure that the way was clear.

He approached a magnificent pink flamingo. She imagined him catching it up and swinging the bird at her like a scythe. She slowed her pace, crouching even lower in readiness.

He passed the beady-eyed flamingo and came up against the wall.

She released a breath. “Now,” she commanded in a steady voice, “move towards the door and open it slowly.”

“I rather think not,” Kaspar said, smiling.

As she contemplated darting forward again, slashing at him, his gaze flicked beyond her and his smile broadened. “Ah,” he said, “I see that Mr Yezhov has recovered sufficiently to join us.”

She broke out in a sudden hot sweat. He had to be bluffing. The small man’s face had been sliced beyond repair...

“Mr Volovich,” said a voice behind her, turning her blood to ice, “you seem to be in difficulty...”

Volovich glared at the younger man. “Miss Chatterjee has proven herself to be a worthy opponent, Yezhov, and one we were unwise to have underestimated.”

“Between us, I think we will be able to subdue her,” Yezhov said.

“And the subsequent operation,” Volovich said, “and the reading of the thoughts in her pretty little head, will be made all the sweeter for her futile act of resistance.”

She saw movement on the periphery of her vision. To her left, the young man, Yezhov, moved into sight, carrying a meat cleaver. He’d made running repairs to his face in the form of a bandage wound around his head. The white bindings, rapidly turning red, held the sliced flap of his cheek in place and covered his left eye.

He said something in Russian.

The older man replied in English, for Jani’s benefit. “Perhaps, as you are armed and I am not, Yezhov, you should have the singular honour of subduing our guest. But go gently. We would not want any harm to befall the girl yet.”

Jani backed off, stifling the urge to cry out. She would fight to the last, she resolved. After all, she was armed. If she could slice Yezhov again, then attend to Volovich...

She ran towards Yezhov and slashed at the arm holding the meat cleaver.

He backed off with the nimbleness of a ballerina, grinning at her.

Jani’s advance had left her open to an attack from the rear, and Volovich pressed home his advantage. Before she could swing around and strike out, the older man had her arms pinioned – while the younger man, laughing now with satisfaction, danced forward and struck her head with the blunt edge of the cleaver.

She slumped, pain flaring across her skull. She felt strong arms lift her, bundle her like a sack across the chamber – toppling stuffed animals – towards the autopsy table. They dropped her without ceremony onto its cold surface; her head hit the steel and she moaned in pain.

They bound her hands, and then her legs, so that though she struggled, she was unable to move. She opened her eyes, stared up at the skylight overhead. From time to time the faces of her captors came into view as they prepared for the operation.

“Drill?” Yezhov asked.

“Check.”

“Circular saw?”

“Check.”

“Trepanning screw?”

“Check.”

“Anaesthetic...?”

A silence. Then Yezhov said, “I think, in the circumstances, we might dispense with the anaesthetic.”

“Considering the distinct lack of co-operation shown by our guest,” Volovich said, “I think Miss Chatterjee has foregone the privilege.”

A face came into view inches above her eyes. Volovich’s great moon of a head, pocked with craters left by old boils and carbuncles, peered down at her.

“This will be painful, but not fatal, as that would defeat the object of the exercise. You have taken great delight in lying to us so far, but your lies are at an end. Within the hour, your thoughts will be laid bare for us to read.”

“What should we do with her then?” Yezhov asked.

“When we have learned what we want from Miss Chatterjee’s pretty little skull, I will take great delight in skinning her alive and mounting her chestnut Indian hide on a suitably svelte frame, if I can locate one amongst the taxidermist’s stock.”

Yezhov’s grinning visage, swaddled in bloody bandages, came into view – all the more farcical for being bracketed by a pair of bulky ear-phones connected to the wireless-like CWAD.

Jani cried out, pulling at the ropes that bound her arms and legs. Her struggles rattled the table and she twisted back and forth. They would hardly be able to operate on her head if it were in constant movement.

Yezhov had a simple remedy, and brought the back of the meat cleaver down on her skull once again.

She moaned in pain and her head flopped. Semi-conscious, she felt cold fingers arrange her head. Something braced her temples, clamping tight, so that her head was held in place. She opened her eyes and stared at the sunlight slanting through the dusty skylights. She was beyond terror, feeling only a dull disbelief, a serene sense of remove; she wanted in some way to defy the pair, to strike some valiant last blow, but knew that she was incapable of doing so.

She stared up at Volovich as he lowered the flimsy wire frame of the CWAD over her face and made a minimal adjustment, lips pursed in concentration.

She felt pin-pricks on her cheeks and forehead. Volovich applied pressure to the frame and the spikes pierced her skin. Then he lifted the frame from her head and smiled down at her.

“Drill,” he said.

She saw the drill pass before her eyes, and Volovich leaned over her again. “And now, using the frame’s puncture marks as my guide, I will proceed to drill two dozen small holes into your skull. I would close your eyes, Miss Chatterjee, as this might be a little bloody.”

She would be damned if she’d close her eyes. She remained staring at him and managed to say, despite her clamped jaw, “May you die in agony, Volovich!”

“But not before you, my dear.”

He lowered the drill to her forehead, and despite her best resolve she closed her eyes and sobbed.

The explosion filled the chamber like a thunderclap, adding panic to Jani’s terror. She heard Volovich and Yezhov exclaim above the din. She did her best to sit up, straining against the ropes and staring at the thing that was striding through the ruins of the far wall.

She had heard about these inventions, seen posters in London for an exhibition where Mech-Men would be on show. The photographs and illustrations had been impressive enough, showing mechanical men fully fifteen feet tall – all flashing lights and oiled metal carapaces – but the reality was altogether more startling.

The Mech-Man stomped through the tumbled masonry with legs as thick as girders, pushing aside drifts of brick and beams with hands like the scoops of mechanical diggers. Its torso was an amalgam of black boilerplate and ornately etched scrollwork – as if Aubrey Beardsley had gone to work on an invention by Isambard Kingdom Brunel – and polychromatic running lights threw the chaos of its arrival into crazed relief. Amidst the mayhem, the fur and feathers of a hundred stuffed animals filled the air in a whirling maelstrom.